The full gallery of images can be found here. Below are two portraits: One of Sheikh Abdul Majeed Sghair, Sheikh of the Othman Pasha Madrasa, and the other of Sheikh Khalid Bin Saydan, who is an instructor at the Othman Pasha Madrasa and also the Friday khatib at the famous Dragut Pasha Mosque in the Old Madina. The Old Madina has at least 50 mosques and madrasas from the Ottoman period and I hope, in successive visits, to be able to document it all.

For more on Tripoli and some outside regions, including photos of the Dragut Pasha Mosque, click here.

All photos © Sohail Nakhooda/Kalam Research and Media
Nikon D300

© Sohail Nakhooda | Kalam Research & Media

An Indian lady wearing a colourful sari in Old Madina in Tripoli having just left a service at the Old Catholic Church!

I had the chance to spend a good hour at the Sayyidi Munaydar Islamic cemetery in Tripoli. This historic cemetery has been the burial ground of illustrious Tripolitanians, including a Companion of the Prophet Muhammad, may peace and blessings of God be upon him, and also leading scholars and mystics of the city, including those of Ottoman families. Many of the graves at Islamic cemeteries here in Tripoli have a small water bowl for the birds as a way of earning some precious hasanat, or blessings, in the hereafter …

Nikkor 24-70mm and Nikkor 50mm   © Sohail Nakhooda | Kalam Research & Media

Anyway, for those that would like to get away from it all there is always cricket, that most elegant of sports. Over the last few years the cricket-loving public seems to have gravitated to the very-limited overs format (or the T20 as they call it) and that has helped them retain their passion for the sport. The test match is becoming a luxury for many, modern lives are unnecessarily, though even inevitably, stressful and people’s temperaments and attention spans seem to cope less and less with the 5-day epic. I guess things were always going that way, indicative, if nothing else, of the natural decline of human sensibility; yet interest in cricket is still high with the introduction of the razzmatazz-filled T20. T20 is more akin to watching an American sport, expecting Mickey Mouse to wave his hand at any moment in the crowd, than anything associated erstwhile with cricket. But at least it has captured the imagination of the young generation of cricketers, and that is some consolation!

Hopefully there will always be a place for the test match format, for those that love the game for its sheer grace and beauty. 

Nikkor 85mm & 70-200mm  © Sohail Nakhooda / Kalam Research & Media

Nikkor 24-70mm | f2.8 | ISO 100   © Sohail Nakhooda / Kalam Research & Media

And here is a touching spiritual piece by the Sufis of the Nagore dargah in South India’s Tamil Nadu.

Kalam has always been a key Islamic science and it was only in the 20th century that the discipline became discredited in the wake of puritanical propaganda. For centuries, however, it served to buttress the faith from the challenges of its times; its role is ever more urgent today when there is desperate need for intellectual sophistication and coherency in belief. The development of the Kalam tradition has been seriously hampered in the face of the systemic transformations that took place in the post-colonial period in the Muslim world, which saw the dismantling of much of its traditional learning centres, and the subsequent rise of political and puritanical forms of Islam, at odds with the orthodox framework of the Islamic tradition, leaving no room for theological and spiritual refinement. The modern period, and the subsequent monopoly of discourse at the hands of Islamists and puritans, effectively put an end the notion of a civilisation in Islam. Without an internal intellectual coherence, modern developments in Muslim thought and society are but a pastiche of ideas unable to hold together in a meaningful manner. 

Today, the developments in the various fields of human and natural sciences and in the arts call for an urgent and serious engagement by Muslims. The only way this will be possible is through a revival of the Kalam tradition, though broadened to incorporate a much wider theological enterprise than previously that can once again make sense of the world we live in and which also bridges the gap between being and existence, thought and action, between learning centres and their communities. Issues related to evolution, ethics, pluralism, inter-faith, environment, quantum physics, etc, cannot be dealt with on purely legal terms, but must be engaged through a systematic theological, rational, spiritual, ethical and legal vantage point. If the idea of an Islamic civilization is to be rekindled then all of its fundamental sciences, from theology to art, must also be revived. Without them we will simply not have the basic tools to probe the burning questions of the age. The theological enterprise is therefore an urgent one.

The Dubai workshop therefore, was the first in a continuing series of workshop and programmes. The Kalam group will hope to coordinate research and collaborate on key projects related to the development and articulation of a new, yet fully orthodox, theology. The projects will draw on individual scholars and religious and academic institutions through the world, and its spirit will be collegial and collaborative. The task of renewal of theology is not the enterprise of one scholar or one institution but the effort of a whole network of Muslim scholars, it is a network of networks, as Dr Aref Nayed has coined.

Participants in the first workshop included (see group photo, right to left) Dr Adi Setia (Malaysia), Kamran Bajwa (Bahrain), Sheikh Usama Al-Sayyid (Egypt), Waleed Arafa (UK), Sheikh Muhammad Afifi Al-Akiti (UK), Habib Ali Al-Jifri (UAE), Dr Aref Nayed (UAE/Libya), Dr Recep Senturk (Turkey), Sheikh Jihad Brown (UAE), Dr Umar Faruq Abd-Allah (USA), Dr Sherman Jackson (USA), Dr Nidhal Guessoum (UAE), Dr Bilal Kuspinar (Bahrain), Walead Mosaad (UAE), Muhammad Almselate (Libya) and Hakim Gadi (Libya). The workshop was also attended by Dr Amir Al-Islam (USA). More information on this project and its development will be regularly published in the Kalam Research & Media’s website (www.kalamresearch.com)

© Sohail Nakhooda / Kalam Research & Media